So, personally I enjoy hunting for vintage lenses on eBay and playing around with them – via various adapters – on my 4K camera. But that’s not the way of the future, according to science. Get ready for meta-lenses.

Instead of shaping, coating and polishing glass to perfection, science will (some time in the future) be turning to titanium dioxide for optimal light and color reflection. And it comes in a tiny package. As in nano-tiny. Which means that, while it sometimes feels good to hold a heavy lens, it will be possible to package powerful lenses in ultra-compact camera bodies. Not hard to imagine what this might do for phone and action cameras, but I’m sure it will also make high-end equipment a lot more agile and versatile.

Hopefully that means that – at some point – even those of us working with zero $ budgets will get access to lenses providing million-$ picture quality.